Thought I would also pop into this conversation - hope it's not too much of a tangent, but Grinity's story about ADHD in year 2/model student in year 3 is really interesting to me...
We're into week 2 at school where Miss 7 has grade-skipped. Already the teacher is talking to me about that ol' chestnut - focus, focus, focus. I immediately went into Drill Sergeant mode. I set up rewards and consequences if Miss 7 got a time-out at school (the day before she got somewhere between 3-5, but the exact details are a bit fuzzy). Then I had a coffee with an acquaintance who has 3 gifted daughters and a pile of research papers under her wings. And boy, did I feel some good mumma guilt!
The main lessons that came out of the conversation for me were:
* don't buy into the school's mindset that your child's learning style is bad, undesirable, problematic...
* talk with your child constantly so as to combat any thoughts that they're coming away with from school feeling like THEY are bad, undesirable and problematic...
* teach your child how to survive, operate and hopefully even thrive within the school system - but accept that thriving may be an outcome that's just not achievable. Operating in a structured classroom is not easy for highly gifted kids. Sitting, listening, focusing, working in a classroom with uncomfortable chairs, kids making noises, the air-con hissing, scratchy carpet, a spider web blowing in the breeze, doing worksheets that appear meaningless...
* teach your own child to love learning, coz this may not happen at school.
Part of our settling in to school phase is acknowledging that we did a real sales job on Miss 7 to grade skip into year 4. But her reality hasn't changed. The work is still boring. She's sitting next to 2 kids who are working light years below her. We promised that it would be exciting and new and interesting and challenging. And it's not. School work can be very mundane, repetitive and boring.
And when you find out that the teacher is giving her a time-out because she got "lost in her book" - and was 3 minutes late for class after lunch - accept that the place she escaped to was most probably the most engaging thing she had done all day.
This has really opened up a can of worms for me - discipline vs punishment. Hmm....
I love to read stories like yours Grinity because it gives me hope that finding a good school fit will resolve lots of our issues. But the conversation yesterday has motivated me to re-think a very likely scenario - that I just don't find a good school fit. What then? How do I teach the girls to operate within the system we've got?
*sigh* Anyway, thanks for asking the question giftedticcyhyper. When I start thinking that my girls have ADD/ADHD/problems... I know it's time for me to have a time-out!!!!!
jojo
